CSR - Apple audits the supply chain

The headline in the Telegraph today doesn’t read well for Apple, but I wonder whether the underlying story is actually good news for the firm and enhances its reputation for CSR?

Apple is the only major technology company to audit its supply chain and publish the results. The latest Apple Supplier Responsibility Report (2011) is now available and it provides a fascinating insight into the issues raised by an audit of Apple’s supply chain.

Apple has been able to increase the number of supplier factories audited - and the results make somewhat uncomfortable reading. For example, Apple said that 91 children under the age of 16 were discovered to be working in 2010 in ten Chinese factories owned by its suppliers. By comparison, in 2009, Apple said eleven underage workers had been discovered.

The use of child labour is not the only problem. So too are long working hours. Two-thirds of the factories which supply components for Apple’s range of products, or who assemble them, make their workers work for more than 60 hours a week and do not give their workers one day of rest per seven working days.

Hazardous working conditions also feature in the report. Apple reports that 137 workers at Wintek, another supplier, had been poisoned by n-hexane, a chemical used to clean the screens of iPods and iPhones. Apple said it had asked Wintek to cease using the chemical.

The findings are hardly surprising given the bad publicity that Apple has received for its record on CSR and its supply chain. The Foxconn suicide issue was a classic example of this. But at least the Apple Supplier Responsibility Report provides stakeholders and shareholders with some assurance that Apple is addressing the issues.